Do you only defend Muslims when it is the American government that threatens them, and not when Muslim fanatics do?
Category: Latest News
Welcome to our archive of news stories relevant to the project of fighting fashionable nonsense. The stories are drawn from the electronic pages of the world’s media. On this page, you’ll find links to those stories that have been featured on Butterflies and Wheels during the current year. At the bottom of the page, you’ll find links to separate archives of stories from previous years.
We’re always pleased to hear about news stories that you think should be featured on Butterflies and Wheels. Just send an email here, if you want to point one out to us.
A note about links
Inevitably links go out of date. We suggest, therefore, that you make hard-copies of the stories that particularly interest you.
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WLUML statement on Asia Bibi
Pakistan: Ensure the safety of Asia Bibi and her family and repeal Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws.
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Sock puppet gets six months in jail
He sent emails in someone else’s name, admitting to plagiarism; claimed to think that was “parody, irony, satire.”
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Israel: “bastard clause” de-fathers infant
The law forbids a woman to remarry for at least 90 days after being divorced or widowed.
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Johann Hari on religion and cruelty
No, we don’t respect your desire to needlessly torment animals because some hallucinating desert nomads did it centuries ago.
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Jesus and Mo go for a drive
Mo’s peripheral vision is not what it might be.
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The instruments of torture
Jerry Coyne visits the Palace of the Inquisition in Cartagena, and takes pictures. Warning: graphic horrors.
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Gita Sahgal on human rights folly and Awlaki
By deliberately sanitising al-Awlaki’s reputation, the CCR is acting as criminal defence lawyers rather than human rights lawyers.
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Rights groups should not sanitize Awlaki
Awlaki published an article in al-Qaida’s magazine openly calling for assassinations of several people, including a cartoonist in Seattle and Salman Rushdie.
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Geoff Nunberg on Austen and punctuation
She wrote untidy drafts; it is foolish to conclude from this that she was a clumsy writer who needed help from a man.
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Nuisance lawsuit targets “climate hawk” politicians
“Let Freedom Ring” is a Conservative think-tank set up thanks to a $1 million donation from the president of the Templeton Foundation.
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Confederate flag “a symbol of Jesus Christ”
According to Arkansas state representative Loy Mauch, who would like the south to withdraw from the US.
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Republicans and Tea Partiers go after scientists
Why, after all, have a panel on energy independence and global warming if you don’t believe in either? -
Aikin and Talisse wage war on Christmas
The Christmas myths are morally horrid. That’s not the worst of it, though. They are overwhelming, suffocating.
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Jesus and Mo channel Karl Giberson
They celebrate their precarious and profound middle ground.
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Rowntree Trust gives £120k to Cageprisoners
Says Moazzam Begg is the right sort of fella to build bridges and make links to young Muslims.
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Tortured maid in stable condition in Saudi hospital
The latest in a string of physical abuse cases involving Indonesian migrant workers in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries.
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Indonesian maid tortured by Saudi employers
Her injuries include gashes to her face and cuts to her lips, allegedly inflicted by her employers using scissors. She was also burned with an iron.
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Indonesia: man on trial for “blasphemy”
Charges will be dropped if he builds a new musholla. Hmm.
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Pakistan: outcry against blasphemy death penalty
The campaign to confront the country’s blasphemy laws is hampered by the danger of being accused of undermining Islam.